


i couldn't get the boy to kill me, but i wore his jacket for the longest time.

by hasitsclaws



Series: we're inconsolable. [7]
Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Adult Content, F/M, Incest, M/M, mature themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 02:57:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1589144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hasitsclaws/pseuds/hasitsclaws
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd known for a while Richie had a storm brewing inside of him, but hadn't figured out until then that it was more a hurricane than anything.</p><p>part seven of the 'we're inconsolable' drabble series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i couldn't get the boy to kill me, but i wore his jacket for the longest time.

He remembers when they were kids, when Richie would make model airplanes and he'd help him hang them up in their room, flying over Richie's bed.

Their father once broken every, single one in a drunken rage.

Seth doesn't really understand how these trials were supposed to work, or whatever.

Kate has read up on the mythology of it, told him how the brothers beat the Gods, tricked them every single time and were reborn again and again.

"So what was that test in the warehouse for?" he asks, driving some back route through the countryside of Mexico, back to where it all started.

They've got a meeting with Freddie in a few hours-- the ranger'd said he needs their help, and she'd been insistent that they meet with him for old time's sake, that they owe him one after he helped them make it out of that Godforsaken strip bar. Not to mention Freddie had emailed Kate all of Sex Machine's notes to help them figure out this whole trip to the Underworld thing, and that was what'd finally convinced Seth to make the two day drive back to the border.

"I don't know," Kate says, flipping through the notes in her lap. "Maybe it's because the brothers always had a reason to go into the Underworld."

"So she gave me a reason?" Seth asks, taking the next turn that will lead to the diner Freddie asked to meet them at.

Kate shrugs. "I guess. But the brothers usually went for more than getting a lover back."

Seth just sort of looks at her. "Princess," he says exasperatedly. "When are you going to get that you're so much more than a lover to me? And to Richie too, for that matter."

Kate just sort of looks out the window and blushes.

Richie tried to adopt a stray bird once, when he was about seven. It was a crow with a broken wing, and Richie was convinced he could nurse it back to health.

"Can we keep him?" Richie had asked, big, eager eyes behind bottle-bottom glasses.

Seth sighed, had never been able to refuse his little brother anything. "Fine. Just don't let dad find out."

Their father _did_ find out, eventually, and he'd broken the bird's neck right in front of Richie.

Seth thinks that's the day that his little brother started fracturing from the inside out.

The diner is small, sweltering in the Mexican sun.

Seth enters first, hand on the gun in the back of his waistband-- he can feel Kate rolling her eyes behind him.

The Ranger's sitting by himself at a booth in the back, three cups of coffee waiting. He stands when he sees them, holds out his hand to Seth who shakes it wearly. Kate doesn't hesitate to hug Freddie, always the one who asks him how his family is on the phone because Seth's just there for business speak.

"You look good, Kate," Freddie says, smiling at her. "This _bandido_ treating you well?"

Seth scoffs while Kate just laughs. "He's decent enough," she answers. "How are you, Freddie? How's Margaret and Billy?"

"They're good," Freddie says, manner soft around the edges when talking about his family. "We just found out last we're going to have another little one running around the house."

"Congradulations!" Kate says, and she looks like she means it, but even from seeing just the side of her, Seth can recognize the sadness there, the regret. She said that after what happened last year, after the hell they've found themselves in the middle of, she never wants kids.

Seth thinks that's just a lie to fit the situation.

Kate and Freddie finally sit, and Seth loops his arm over the former's shoulders, smirks when he sees Freddie shift uncomfortably-- he still thinks of Kate as that seventeen year old, preacher's daughter that went into the Titty Twister and lost it all, has always failed to see the strong, fearless woman that walked out.

"So what do you need our help with, Ranger?" Seth asks, doesn't touch the coffee Freddie ordered for him because even after all this time, after the pact he made with Freddie that morning outside the bar, he still doesn't trust the guy, not all the way.

"My wife's cousin, Miguel, is missing," Freddie says, glances between Seth and Kate with equal measure. "He was a hunter, but she doesn't know that. Last I heard from him was two weeks ago, when he and his group were trying to find Santanico."

There's a pause, both Kate and Seth taking the words in. They haven't seen hair nor hide of the Demigoddess since the incident at the warehouse four months ago. Haven't seen Richie, either.

"You think he's still alive?" Kate asks.

Freddie nods, albeit hesitantly. "I got this from him a few days ago, right before I called you." Freddie holds up his cell phone and presses the button for voice-mail, lets a message playback. It's in Spanish, but by now Seth and Kate have learned enough of the language to decipher the words through the static.

" _Freddie, it's me. I got in way over my head man. I came with some others, but they're gone. This place is a blood cult. I don't know where I am. But she's turning us_ all _. I need your help, brother. I don't know what she's planning, but that minion of hers, the crazy Gecko brother, he's_ \--" There some static and scraping of metal on stone-- " _Oh God, oh no, stop, st-ah!_ \--" Miguel screams and the call ends, line hanging off on a never ending dial tone.

Seth shivers at the end of it, mention of his brother's name and an idea of what happened next; beside him, Kate's eyes look glassy, like she's going to cry.

Freddie ends the voice-mail and puts his phone back in his pocket. "I tracked the call to somewhere in Mexico City. Looks like Santanico came home for a while."

"And I'm guessing you want us to go find her?" Seth asks, mood turned sour because _of course_ the Ranger wants them to risk themselves for him.

"I don't want Miguel stuck as one of them," Freddie says. "You of all people should understand that."

And _shit_ , Seth thinks, because he does.

**  
  
**

The first time they kissed, it was Richie who initiated it.

They were in some foster home, and a family was looking at potentially adopting Richie since he was smart and they thought he had " _potential_ ". Seth was nearly eighteen and was afraid they'd take him before he could appeal to the courts to be Richie's legal guardian, would lose his little brother to some posh business couple from Houston.

Richie was apparently worried about the same thing, had crawled into Seth's bed and cuddled close, which hadn't been unusual once, when they were kids. But both of them were getting up into their late teens now, and while Seth didn't feel uncomfortable with it in the slightest, he knew they'd get questioned if their latest caretaker came through the door and saw them. Maybe even beaten, if it set the old biddy off badly enough.

"I don't want to leave," Richie said to him, and Seth stopped worrying about being caught and worried about his little brother instead.

"I'm not going to let them take you," he said.

Richie looked up at him then, eyes shining in the minimal moonlight coming through the gap in the curtains. "You promise?" Richie asked.

"I promise," Seth said, and he meant it.

Richie kissed him sort of unexpectedly after that, and at first Seth didn't do anything about it, just laid there while Richie put his hands on his face, tried to coax Seth's mouth open with his tongue. And Seth knew it should've felt wrong, that they _couldn't_ do this, but it didn't feel like it wasn't supposed to happen, either.

And so he kissed Richie back with everything he could, and tried to hold his little brother together the way he always had.

They get a motel room in Mexico city and Kate sets her research out across the bed.

Seth sits behind her while she reads for a while, flipping through the television channels, before finally he finds himself staring at her for a good fifteen minutes. She's wearing one of his t-shirts and nothing else to try and beat the heat, her hair slid up off of her neck to expose some of the love bites he left there the last time they made love.

Slowly, he moves up so he can kiss the bruises, hears her sigh and smiles. "Wanna christen the venue?" he asks.

She turns in his embrace and laughs. "I'm trying to do research."

"And I'm trying to get you to _not_ do research. It's all you've done the past _t_ w _o_ _days_ ," he answers, hands slipping up under his t-shirt to feel her skin.

" _Mmm_ ," she mumbles as he pinches at one of her nipples, leaning into the embrace. "Okay... But just for a while. And then we go look for Miguel."

"Sure, baby girl," he says, pulling her back against the bed and fitting himself into the crook between her thighs. "Whatever you say."

Richie wanted to go to college.

It was the reason they starting pulling off big heists, initially-- for tuition and all that shit. Seth had never even gotten his G.E.D. after running from the foster home when Richie's adoption papers had been signed, two brothers disappearing into the night because they refused to be separated. Richie, on the other hand, had found some online program, graduated top of the class and now he wanted to move on to grander venues and explore his genius-- his words, not Seth's.

"What kind of degree do you want, anyways?" Seth had asked once, eating some Hawaiian burger as Richie raved over this sugary drink or whatever-- Seth never could remember the name of it.

"Mechanics, maybe," Richie had said. "Or biophysicist. Just imagine though, brother. I could make enough money that we could hang up the life of crime. Move across the sea, to Norway or something. They're pretty liberal over there-- maybe they'd accept us."

"Now you're just talking crazy, Richie," Seth had laughed, throwing a fry at him.

Richie'd just smiled. "So, are we gonna try for it or not?"

"I guess it couldn't hurt," Seth had answered.

Somehow, Richie never got around to enrolling.

It takes them three days to figure out where Santanico is, and it's only by a stroke of luck they do.

"We're getting nowhere," Kate says on that third afternoon, breathing out a sigh. "I'm about ready to kill a _person_ , let alone a vampire."

"Let's take a break," Seth suggests, makes an illegal U-turn at the next intersection and starts heading towards city limits. "You said you wanted to Chapultepec Castle, right?"

"Like two years ago," Kate laughs. "Before all this shit happened."

"Well, why not see it anyways?" he asks, takes her hand from over the console and follows the signs for the landmark. "Act like newlyweds and fuck with the tour guide a little?"

"Newlyweds?" Kate asks with a raised brow.

He bites his lip, glances over at her. He's been thinking about it for a while now, longer than he would like to admit. He doesn't want to spend his days with anyone else now that his brother isn't his brother anymore. He'd meant it when he told Vanessa they were never good together. But him and Kate-- they just _get_ each other. He's never had the kind of connection he does with her with anyone else besides Richie, but even then it was different.

With Richie it always felt like waiting for a flood to happen; with Kate it always feels like he never wants to say goodbye.

"You know, you're going to be twenty here, soon. Lots of people get married at twenty," Seth tries, gauging her reaction.

"Maybe in the Fifties," she snorts, and he sighs, takes the next turn and tries to continue on without sounding too much like an idiot.

"Why not be a little old fashioned?" he asks.

She doesn't answer him right away, and when he glances over at her out of the corner of his eye, he sees that she's just staring out the window, expression thoughtful. "Are you trying to ask me to marry you?" she questions, finally looking at him.

"That depends," he answers. "Would you say yes if I did?"

Seth had thought it'd been true when he'd told Vanessa that he was all Richie had, had figured that Richie was all _he_ had, too.

He guesses it's because Richie hadn't found anything better at the time.

"I'll get you a ring if we live through this little party," Seth says as they walk up to the castle's entrance, Kate's hand still in his.

"I'm only going through with this on the condition that Freddie agrees to stand in for Dad and give me away," she says.

Seth frowns. "Any other demands, princess?"

"Yeah, come to think of it," she answers. "We have the wedding in an actual _church_. And not the Vegas kind, either, but an actual house of God."

"I don't know why I bothered to ask you," he answers, and she all but shoves him into the bushes.

Their tour guide speaks Spanish, French, English, German and two forms of Chinese. Luckily they get loped into a group that's predominantly comprised of English speaking tourists, all of which are wearing fanny packs and cameras.

Seth could laugh at the image.

"Isn't this exciting?" asks one of the women in the group to Kate; she's a middle aged housewife with red hair that's so poofy it looks like a cockatiel's, but Kate smiles at her big anyways and nods. "I'm Lucy," the woman says, holding out a hand. "And you are?"

"Kate," Kate answers, shaking the woman's hand. "It's nice to meet you."

"You too," Lucy says, pulls on the arm of the man she's traveling with. "This is Marvin," she says. "My husband."

Seth guesses Marvin has an office job and pays for hookers on the weekend with spare cash. "How do you do?" Marvin asks in a cheesy southern accent, and Seth knows he's right.

"Who do you have with you here, dear? You father?" Lucy asks after a moment, nodding to Seth.

Kate flinches.

"No, I'm her _husband_ ," Seth says, ignores Kate's quick jab to his ribs and gives Lucy and Marvin a shit-eating grin when their expression go from excited, to blank, to shocked. "I was Katie-cakes' Spanish teacher in high school. We fell in love and after she graduated we decided to get hitched and tour down here in good ol' Mexico, right honey?" he asks, pulling her into his side goofily.

Kate laughs. "Oh, sweetie," she says, pretends to pat his shoulder but really she's digging the bottom of her palm into a healing wound he got from a hunt last week.

"Well isn't that nice?" Lucy asks, eyes squinting up as she turns to face forwards again and effectively ignore them for the rest of the tour.

"Marriage off," Kate says to Seth in the next instant, but he simply grins and kisses her.

Their first heist had gone entirely ass-up, ending with the convenience store owner they'd tried to rob punching Richie in the face and telling them to get their sorry asses out of there.

It had broken Richie's glasses and the kid had been so angry he'd lunged at the clerk, beat him to a bloody pulp before Seth had finally managed to pull his little brother off the guy.

"Hey, _hey_ ," Seth had said, pressing his forehead against Richie's. "It's okay, _we're_ okay."

He'd known for a while Richie had a storm brewing inside of him, but hadn't figured out until then that it was more a hurricane than anything.

The tour is sub-par, not letting them go past velvet ropes or anywhere cool.

Night begins to fall outside the windows and Seth thinks they're going to be led to the exits soon when the tour guide stops, turns to them all with a smile as the lights start shutting off.

"Well folks, since we're the last group, tour policy says I can give you a special visit to the catacombs," he says.

Kate bristles against Seth's side.

"Catacombs?" she asks. "This place doesn't have those."

"Oh contraire, my young friend," the tour guide says. "They were installed during the war to house the sick and dying. Not public knowledge, but still very much there. So if you'll all just follow me..."

"I don't like this," Kate says as the group starts moving, sliding her hand down over the bulge of Seth's gun in the back of his waistband.

"Me neither," he answers. "But I wanna see what he's playing at."

The group follows the guide through the halls, security guards nodding at the latter as he passes. Finally they make it to a large set of wooden doors carved with ancient markings in the back of the castle.

"After you," the tour guide says when the doors open, and the group starts going in.

"Why aren't you going first?" Kate asks, her and Seth having hung at the back of the group.

The tour guide smiles. "I'm not on the meal list," he answers, and shoves them through the opening with inhuman strength.

They stumble and give the guide enough time to close the doors, bolts clicking into place. The entire group starts screaming once immersed in darkness, and Kate pulls out Seth's gun, fires at the doors but the bullets ricochet off.

Somewhere in the distance, hissing starts.

"Guess we found them," Seth says.

Kate lowers the gun. "Guess so."

Seth refused to believe that Richie was crazy.

Even when Richie killed that bank teller, he told himself that it would all be okay, that as long as they made it to El Rey, everything would work out.

Of course, it didn't.

The vamps are quick in starting to pick off the tourists one by one.

Luckily Seth and Kate weren't stupid enough to not bring weapons, her pulling out a stake and him aiming the gun at the nearest on-comer once he's got a flashlight's beam on its ugly face.

There's only nine of them, easy enough pickings thanks to experience, and once all is said and done it's just seven tourists out of a group of twenty left.

"What were those things?" asks a familiar voice-- Seth shines the flashlight on Lucy's face, her husband at her side.

"Oh great," he sighs, just as he hears Kate shuffle around, hands against the wall until she finds a torch and lights it with a Zippo-- count on Santanico to make the place very Indiana Jones accommodating.

The cavern floods with light and Seth sees that besides Lucy, Marvin, him and Kate left alive, there's also a mother and her child shaking a dead guy on the floor, and some crazed looking, middle-aged Mexican guy holding a cross and murmuring prayers into his palms.

"Vampires," Seth says. "And you can bet those weren't the only ones."

"What do we do?" Lucy nearly screams, shaking like a frightened rabbit.

"We have to go deeper," Kate says. "And stake the bodies."

"No! _Don't_. You ca _n't_!" Screams the woman touching the dead man, heavy accent leaking into the words, blurred by her sobbing. "My husband-- _please_!"

"He's going to come back," Kate says. "And he'll kill you and your daughter."

"Why's this happening?" Marvin asks, breath coming in harsh pants.

"Their queen wants an army," Seth says, taking Kate's stake and stabbing it into the heart of the first body just as the poor fucker wakes up, screeching and fangs bared. "And we were on the meal list for it."

Seth knew straight off the bat that Richie had a connection to Kate, that they both did.

His brother had always been bad at social contact, but with Kate it was easy-- he'd even been able to _kiss_ the girl, for Christ's sake.

Seth had felt jealous when he'd seen it, but only because he'd been left out, not because they were touching each other.

The catacombs here aren't as elaborate as the ones at the Titty Twister-- Seth figures they're recently made, fresh dirt kept up with stone pillars and the Mayan symbol for sacrifice.

"You think this place is going to fuck with our heads like the last one?" Kate asks, torch raised towards the darkness in front of them.

"I fucking hope not," Seth says, remembers the last head-trip and shudders.

"Me too," Kate answers. "And Seth?"

"Yeah?"

"I was only kidding when I said I wouldn't marry you anymore."

The first time they had sex was only a little after their first heist.

Richie initiated of course, Seth on the bottom letting his little brother jerk him off in quick motions before fucking into him, labored breath in the dark and their foreheads pressed together.

It never felt wrong, but it never felt exactly right, either.

They get to end and find a hollowed out network of rooms looking down to a dais below, water flooding up at the sides since it's what this city was built on.

The tourists have been crying this entire time-- they lost the old, crazy guy a half a mile back to a stray vamp, his head ripped off and guts ripped out while the others screamed and Kate charged the attacker-- she's going to have a scar above her eyebrow from where the vamp clawed her before she killed it.

"Everyone shut up," Seth hisses, desperate to make them quiet. "We're in the hive now, and unless you want to end up like the others, I suggest you be quiet and do what I say."

"Everyone will make it out with no bumps or scrapes if you do," Kate says, glancing over at him with a secretive kind of look.

He can't help smile, shake his head at her because _of course_ she'd remember his words to her in that stupid motel room so very long ago.

The group is as quiet as they can get as Seth starts looking for a way out on one end, Kate on the other. He worries about her every time she ducks into a new room, can't see what's happening, wants to keep her by his side but knows he can't.

The others start looking too, eventually, and it's Lucy, of all people, who finds something of promise.

"It has stairs!" she says once she comes out of one of the rooms on the third level down, every other one they've checked showing no promise. "They lead up!"

"Then I guess that's our exit," Seth says, looks over to where Kate is leading the mother and daughter duo out of another room, protective stance at their sides-- he thinks she sees herself in them and instantly feels her hurt from it.

The group follows Lucy into the room she's found, up the stairs that are sharply illuminated, winding and winding to the top. When they get to the end of them they're in a room full of bodies hanging from chains on the wall.

"Oh my God," the mother says, covering her child's eyes.

Seth thinks it won't do any good considering this whole place reeks like a funeral home in summer, like death and shit and piss and venom.

"Look," Kate whispers, abandoned the torch for just a flashlight to cause less light and wake anyone or _anything_ up. She raises the beam to a man hanging near the end of the line, his features familiar. Seth remembers it from the picture Freddie showed them before they left the diner. "That's Miguel," she says, staring up at Seth imploringly. "What if he's still human?"

"No way," Seth says. "And we ain't checking."

"I am," Kate says, moves out of his reach before he can stop her.

"Kate--" he tries, but she keeps walking. "Kate- goddamn it. _Kate_!"

He follows after her and the others follow after him. When Kate makes it to Miguel's body she shines the flashlight up on his neck and-- there's nothing. Not bite marks, just dried blood from a cut on the man's head.

Suddenly, Miguel takes a deep breath and jolts awake, eyes staring into Kate's before he starts screaming.

The others wake up just as Seth manages a curse, hissing and spitting and rattling against their chains.

"We're here to help!" Kate tells Miguel frantically, pulling a lock pick out of her pocket and working at his bonds.

"Kate we need to go," Seth says, trying to pull her away; she doesn't budge.

"Please, Freddie sent us," she says to Miguel, and the man stops struggling.

"Freddie?" he asks, voice hoarse and quiet among all the vampire blabber.

"Yeah," Kate says. "We're here to take you home."

She gets him lose and he falls forwards onto her-- Seth instantly goes to help because the man's too large and limp for Kate to hold up herself.

"Wait," Miguel says as the group begins to move forwards. "You don't understand, Santanico, she's--"

The door in front of the group opens up and a feminine figure takes shape in the light spilling through, all the vampires around them going quiet. "Right here," Santanico says. "So nice of you to join us, Seth and Kate. Richard's missed you terribly."

"So this is how it's going to be?" Seth had asked him when he chose sides that night back at the Titty Twister.

"I guess so," Richie had said, Santanico standing back and waiting for him to follow. "Go home, Seth. I don't need you anymore."

What Richie hadn't understood about the statement was that he was Seth's home, and Seth had needed his brother as much as Richie had needed him all along.

"Love what you've done with the place-- real Temple of Doom like the last one," Seth says just as a pair of Santanico's minions finish chaining him up to the wall.

After she'd found them, Santanico had taken the group through the door and into a new kind of chamber, one like her old room back at the Titty Twister. Kate was currently hanging on the wall next to Seth, the others lined up across from them while Miguel laid shivering on the floor, too weak to do anything-- the daughter was crying and the mother was pleading for the life of her child.

"Thank you, Seth," Santanico smirked, looking up at him with her pretty, pretty face, no scales in sight. "Don't get too used to it though. The Underworld's not as pretty."

"You still think I'm going to kill the Gods for you?" Seth laughs. "Fat chance, bitch."

"You won't be doing it for me, though," Santanico says, moves over to wrap her hands around Kate's face and twist it to the side, baring her neck; Kate whimpers and Seth strains against his bonds, wanting to kill Santanico for even touching her. "You'll be doing it for Kate."

"And me."

Seth turns to see Richie come through one of the doorways in the room then, wearing some ridiculous fish-net shirt and dark-washed jeans, his hair no longer slicked back, his glasses having been missing since he got turned.

"I miss the suit," Kate whispers as Santanico leaves her to go stand by Richie's side.

"Me too," Seth answers.

"You just couldn't stay away, could you, brother? Still helped the Ranger even after all the shit he put you through?" Richie asks, goes up to Miguel and kicks him in the side, the hunter too weak to do anything but groan. "Probably just because Kate asked you too, right? We're both just suckers for her big, green eyes, aren't we?"

"Please!" calls the mother from the other side of the room then. "You obviously just want them. Let my daughter and I go?!"

"And who said _you_ could speak?" Richie asks, turns to the woman and she flinches under his gaze. "Shut up unless I ask you to talk."

"You've turned into a real asshole, Richie," Kate says, distracting him from hurting the mother or daughter. It works, has him looking back at her, a muscle in his jaw straining-- Seth exhales loudly because he knows this isn't going to end well.

"And you've turned into a real downer, Kate," Richie says, walks up in front of her and touches her face. She doesn't flinch away from him, but doesn't accept the kiss he gives her either-- bites his lip, has Richie pulling away with a laugh as he touches his fingers to the wound and then licks the blood off. "Don't tell me you love my brother more than me, now?"

"This isn't a fucking _competition_ for my affections," Kate spits, her teeth bared and Seth's never been more proud of her. "This is about you turning into some kind of monster and me being too blind to see it until you kidnapped me and used me as leverage to get your brother to help that evil she-bitch."

Richie raises a hand as if to slap her, Seth calling out his name in warning but he doesn't need to, Richie catching himself and sighing. "I should've known you'd pick my brother," he says. "Everyone always does."

That gets Kate softening, her eyes meeting Richie's in a watery sort of way as she shakes her head. "You said that all of us could've worked together," she tells him. "You were right. But it only works when you choose the good, not the bad."

"And what about me _is_ bad?" Santanico inputs then. "That I want to end the oppression of my people? That I don't want to be a slave anymore?"

"You turn innocent people into monsters!" Kate yells at her. "I know what happened to you was awful-- you didn't deserve that. But neither have any of the people that you've bitten."

"She gave me a choice," Richie tries to defend.

"Only because you were dying," Seth snorts.

"I'm just trying to end a long line of tyranny," Santanico says, entire body rigid.

"With more tyranny," Kate answers. "How many of your so-called followers have had to die for you? That sounds like a monarch in a war. You're no better than the people you're trying to end, Santanico."

Unlike Richie, Santanico has no qualms about slapping Kate-- she does it so hard Kate clicks her teeth into the side of her mouth and coughs out blood, the red leaking down onto her shirt.

"Hey!" both Seth and Richie say, and Seth's kind of glad to see that they can agree upon something, for once.

"You think you know everything just because you're _holy_ ," Santanico says, taking Kate by the jaw so she'll look at her. "How many people have _you_ killed, little girl?"

"Vampires don't count," Kate whispers.

"Not even when they're your brother, or your father?" Santanico asks, and Kate says nothing. "Besides, you've killed humans too. Shot some fellow hunters in cold blood, or am I wrong?" Kate says nothing. "Aha, thought so.

"You see, Kate," Santanico says, lets go of the girl's face and begins walking about the room. "We're not so different, you and I. Two innocent girls brought about to the slaughter, all that blood changing us into something we never wanted to be. But we can take the power _back_ , Kate. We can end it all if you just help me get the Geckos into the Underworld."

"What makes you think they'll actually beat the Gods?" Kate asks. "Those brothers were human. These _aren't_."

"I have faith," Santanico hisses. "Like you once did."

"And look where that got me," Kate says, nodding to the chains above her head. "Nowhere."

"It got you Seth," Santanico said. "It got you Richie, too. And you can have them both, if you help."

"Help?" Seth asks. "She has nothing to do with it."

"But she does," Richie answers him. "The brothers need a reason to go into the Underworld. I'm doing it for Santanico. You'd be doing it for Kate."

"Shut up, Richard," Seth says, grunts when his brother suddenly moves forwards and punches him in the stomach.

"Stop telling me what to do! I may be your little brother, but I'm more than you are now, Seth. You can't treat me like your fucking understudy anymore," Richie says, and the crazed look in his eyes again makes Seth realize how much this _thing_ isn't really his brother anymore.

"Richie, please, just let us go," Kate says. " _Please_."

"Only if Seth agrees," Richie answers, stepping back and breathing deep to calm himself. "Or are you worried he won't live long enough so you can get _married_?"

Kate winces, Seth's head hanging at it because he knows she never wanted Richie to find out, not until it was too late. Even after all this time, she still loves him. But Seth can't really say anything about it, because he still loves Richie, too.

"You and Richie, it was always just you two, right?" Kate asked him one night as they laid together in bed, bare body stretched along the lines of his, still damp with sweat.

"Yeah," Seth said, arms around her tight. "I remember this one time, our fifth heist, one of the tellers got ballsy and aimed a shotgun at me. Richie stepped right in front and aimed his handgun back, wouldn't fucking move until the teller put the gun down. I always tried to protect him, never realized he was doing the same for me."

"I'm so sorry that all of this happened," Kate said, leaning up to look Seth in the eyes, her own filled with tears. "You love him so much, Seth. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," Seth answered. "I knew it couldn't last, anyways."

"You gonna have a spring wedding?" Richie asks, running his fingers down the side of Kate's face. "Gonna wear a nice, white dress and let him fuck you in it after you say 'I do'?"

"Stop it," Kate says, twisting away from his touch.

"Why?" Richie asks. "I mean, am I even invited? Do I get to be the best man, huh, Seth?"

"Richie," Seth warns, teeth grinding together.

"You both love each other more than you love me, huh?" Richie asks. "You thought the same thing about Vanessa, Seth. Look how that turned out!"

"Richie," Santanico says, because even she seems to realize that the guy's getting out of control.

"You think you're going to be happy together?" Richie asks. "Is that it? Together. Without _me_?"

"Mister, please, you can eat them if you want, but let us go!" Says Marvin then, like the typical suburban idiot trope Seth figured him for, doesn't realize his own mistake until Richie's on the man in a flash, ripping him from the wall and burying his fangs into Marvin's neck.

Lucy starts screaming just as Seth and Kate turn their heads away, know it's useless to tell him to stop.

In the end it's Santanico who pulls Richie off, cradles him like a wounded child.

Richie pushes her away.

"You're wrong," he says then, wiping blood off his mouth with his forearm. He turns back to Seth and Kate and smiles like a motherfucking _Bond_ villain. "You're never going to be together, without me. You're never going to be without me, period! I've been _inside_ the both of you, and you're not going to get me _out_!"

"No one said we wanted you out," Seth says, voice barely above a whisper.

Richie's expression turns from one of madness to shock at that, his posture straightening up and eyes blinking as he asks, "What?"

"No one said we wanted you out, Richie," Seth repeats. "You made it so that we had to _forget_ you a long time ago. But we never wanted you out."

Richie exhales shakily then, posture deflating. He looks back and forth between Seth and Kate, their eyes holding the truth of Seth's words and Richie just swallows, turns to look at Santanico who cannot offer him an answer.

"Let them go," he tells her after a terse moment of silence.

"Richie," Santanico says, shaking her head.

"Let. Them. Go," he repeats.

Santanico doesn't move for a moment, but then she sighs and nods her head, motions her lackeys forwards so that they unlock the chains around Seth and Kate's wrists, both of them falling to the floor. Seth quickly moves over to Kate, helps her stand and keeps his arms around her.

"The others?" Kate asks softly.

Santanico rolls her eyes, tells her lackeys to undo their bindings too. The mother falls before the daughter, clutches her child to her chest after she's down and sobs. Lucy comes crumbling forwards and stares at Marvin's body for a moment before walking to Kate, hiding behind the small girl like she's her own, personal shield.

A door opens in the front of the room, revealing a new staircase.

"Leave," Richie says, won't even look at them.

"Richie," Seth tries, because in this moment, he can see his scared, tortured little brother in the man's stance, and wants to help him.

Old habits die hard, he guesses.

"I said _leave_!" Richie yells, turns to them with a face like a snake and his eyes gone yellow. "Get out of here now!"

"Seth, come on," Kate says, tugging on his sleeve.

Seth takes one last look at his brother before he follows, helps Kate pick up Miguel and shoulders the man between her and Lucy so that they can go up the steps first, Seth at the flank in case this is some kind of trick.

"And Seth?" Richie says just as Seth gets onto the first step, has him coming to a standstill.

Exhaling, Seth turns back. "Yes, Richie?"

"This isn't over," Richie says.

The door slams shut in Seth's face.

 

When Richie pulled him out of the fire, Seth wasn't breathing.

Somehow his brother managed to breathe the life back into him, and Seth was never able to breathe without Richie's help again.

"I'm sorry about your husband," Kate says to Lucy when they finally all make it to the outside, the mother holding onto her child desperately.

They guards and the tour guide had let them pass with solemn glares, under strict orders from Santanico not to touch anyone.

"We were getting divorced," Lucy says, eyes on the horizon where the sun's starting to rise. "He had a problem with hookers."

Seth snorts where he's holding Miguel off to the side, the man groaning from the way it shakes his broken body. "Sorry," Seth mumbles, looks up when steps comes towards him and sees the mother and her daughter just standing there, covered in the blood of the mother's dead husband, the daughter's dead father.

"What's your name?" Seth asks, because he never bothered to before.

"Aziza," the woman says, heavy accent a little more pronounced now that she isn't crying anymore. "And my daughter's name is Hasina. Her father's name was Salim."

"I'm sorry," Seth says.

Aziza sighs. "I thought those monsters were just myth."

"Me too, once upon a time," Seth answers.

"What do I do now?" Aziza asks him, lifts her daughter up into her arms. "What do we tell our tribe back home?"

"Whatever you have to," Seth answers. "And here." He takes an old bond out of his pocket, one worth two-thousand and hands it to the woman because he knows Kate would want him to. "Buy yourself some protection, just in case. The world ain't getting any safer, that's for sure."

They make sure the three women get on a bus back into town safely before loading Miguel into the back of the car and calling Freddie.

"And he just let you go?" Freddie asks after Kate relays the story as Seth drives towards the border, Miguel sleeping the trauma off in the backseat.

"Yeah," Kate says, glancing over to Seth who avoids her gaze and continues to stare out the window.

"I can't leave Seth," Richie had once said to Santanico Pandemonium when she offered him eternity. "I'm all he's got."

Seth wishes that that'd been enough.

"I can't begin to thank you," Freddie says, sliding Miguel out of Seth's grip.

"Yeah, thanks homes," Miguel babbles, high off the dose of morphine Kate gave him a few miles back from the stash she had leftover after thefting Seth out of the hospital a few months ago.

"No problem," Kate says, stepping back into the open crook of Seth's arm so Freddie has room to settle Miguel in the passenger seat of his old Ford.

When the door's closed, Freddie comes back around and hugs Kate, shakes Seth's hand. "You two be careful," he says, finds their eyes and gives them a meaningful look. "Call if you need anything."

"Goodbye, Freddie," Kate says, and Seth promises the man he'll take care of her.

The Ranger drives away then, and they watch him go until the car's out of sight, headed for the border, safety waiting on the other side.

"What now?" Kate asks as they climb into their own car.

"You're the second one to ask that today," Seth says as he starts the engine.

"What?" Kate asks.

He shakes his head. "Now, princess, we get ramblin'," he says.

He looks at her and sees the blood dried on her mouth when she smiles, and he's sorry about that, finds it ironic that he couldn't get Richie to kill him, but he's been wearing his sweat jacket this entire time.


End file.
